OMM Club

OMM Club

This all happened toward the end of Peter’s second grade. Summer vacation started shortly after that and by third grade the school had almost forgotten everything. After all, we were not the only ones who had bad experiences with Katie and her mother. And anyway I had certainly been a more visible member of the school community than Katie’s mother and I am sure any doubts anybody had about my character did eventually vanish. But the whole incident certainly hurt both Peter and me.

It also opened my eyes to some facts in what is going on today. First, in any incident involving girls, boys are presumed guilty. It didn’t matter that anybody who was at all involved with our school knew that Katie and her mother had a bad situation at home. It didn’t matter that just one look at Katie’s mother, and her assorted babies over the years, was enough to make your cringe at the kind of mother she was. It didn’t matter that Katie herself had started dressing and acting like her mother since first grade. It didn’t matter that my son and other boys had reported being stalked, etc. None of this mattered. The assumption that everybody operated on seemed to be that there had been some sexual violation against a girl and certainly the boy was guilty.

The second fact my eyes were opened to was that even when nobody thinks that a child is guilty of any serious infraction, if that child is a boy he must be punished. I mean, nobody – neither the principal, nor the police, nor sensible therapists – thought that the sexual curiosity of a couple of seven year-olds is much of a crime. Katie’s background of course did make her precocious sexuality very distasteful to all of us, but after all nothing had gone on between the two kids that was terribly and permanently damaging. It was just some typical childhood incident. If anything, it was the girl’s situation that was not completely innocent. Nevertheless, someone had to be punished and of course the boy was.

The third eye-opener was how certain women have learned to work various systems by exploiting their victimhood. Katie’s mother certainly was a victim. I am sure all her life she had been victimized by various men. But instead of taking steps to protect herself better she was not only exposing her daughter to the same abuse but her idea of fighting for her rights was to hurt and accuse others. It was also an eye-opener to see how groups and organizations whose mission is to protect women’s rights can be so wrong-headed. Instead of providing real help and support to women victims, their idea of advocacy is to distort the situation, be aggressive and vicious, and violate other people’s rights. So much for equal rights and social justice.

I will finish by relating something that I learned about Katie’s mother just recently. The mother of another girl from my son’s class told me that over the years she would occasionally take care of Katie after school. She was aware of Katie’s situation at home so whenever she could she would try to keep Katie from being left alone in the house with her mother’s boyfriends. When I talked to this woman about our experience with Katie and her mother she told me that a year ago (which was a couple of years after this incident with Peter) Katie’s mother moved to a new and better house. To qualify for better low-income housing she needed to show that her present housing situation was dangerous for her daughter. It was during this time that Katie’s mother would leave Katie at home alone with various guys. And sure enough, a number of abuse cases were developed. She reported those to the police and with the help of the advocacy organization she finally qualified for better housing.

This is what was going on when my son and I were drawn into the “situation,” as inspector Bradley put it. Clearly, the police knew what was going on and they were not falling for the victimization stories Katie’s mother was giving them. And perhaps that’s why the advocacy organization had gotten involved. But what seems for sure is that Katie’s mother was using her daughter in order to qualify for better housing. With help from the advocacy organization she went on the offensive against us, the school, and only the police know who else.

Katie’s mother got her apartment at the expense of sacrificing her daughter. And in the process not only we got dragged into an ugly and vicious situation but my son – who everybody knew had nothing to do with any of that – was the one who got punished. Not even the fully informed police could help him.

Comments

hs01 commented on 25-May-2010 09:50 AM

What a story! I don't know what to call it -- Sexism against boys? Confused society? Cowardly school administrators?

tina commented on 25-May-2010 10:29 AM

Thank you for such a revealing article. What an awful thing to live through but I am glad this topic was brought up. We can only hope that boys who encounter girls in this kinds of situatins learn to identify the type and stay away from them.

Anonymous commented on 25-May-2010 10:37 AM

This is outrageous. I wish a lot of people would read this.

mom from denver commented on 25-May-2010 08:24 PM

There is a lot of food for thought in this piece. Thank you Cathy for sharing it. It is a sobering piece.

Lourdes commented on 25-May-2010 10:35 PM

Katie's mother is a monster. It breaks your heart that any child would have a mother like that. But unfortunately she is also creating a monster in her daughter too. Very very sad and frightening.

Darya commented on 26-May-2010 10:13 PM

This is one of the worst school stories I have heard. I'm so sorry for what you've been through and I am horrified by the way the school handled it.

Vicki commented on 26-May-2010 10:26 PM

So this is how you fight for your rights!

Fargie commented on 27-May-2010 05:56 PM

I call it very incompetent school. This is awful and dangerous. It doesn't matter if the kid is a girl or boy.

main mom commented on 28-May-2010 09:09 AM

I read all three parts and it's so maddening and disgusting that I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry about what you and Peter went through Cathy, but I just don't know if anybody can do anything about these kinds of people. True, the school could have handled it much better, but you know how it is. The school wants to avoid lawsuits and other harassments and they know that sort of thing is not going to come from people like it. But Katie's mother and the stupid orgnization that has bought her story could make a lot of trouble for the school. This is how honest and decent people get screwed by the people who know very well that they are honest and decent. Makes me sick. But we have to be strong.

Sirin commented on 31-May-2010 11:38 AM

What an awful story. I think it's a real taboo to talk about girls being sexually aggressive with boys. The boy is always guilty!!! That's for sure....

Ryan Rosensweig commented on 30-Mar-2012 09:20 AM

I have a story too, I was in a special ed. school when I was a kid. I can tell you that it was called, "Norbel," because it closed down for other reasons. They had a zero tolerance policy against everything. There was a teacher who would all always hug
me all over, and I was a little touchy about being touched if you don't mind the pun, so one day I got sick of it. I thought I had to physically attack her back to get her off of me. And this was because I was traumatized by an incident when I was little and
my dad was tickling me and I told him to stop, but he didn't listen he heard me just fine. I got the words, "don't and stop" out of my mouth through the laughing, but my dad jokingly said, "don't worry, I won't stop." Anyway, I pushed her back against the
door to the room that I was about to enter and I had to eat lunch by myself instead of the person who I was chosen to eat lunch with that day as a social skill building exercise. And of course, my parents were called, and they locked me in my room for the
rest of the night for what I did and yelled at me. And for a while after graduating, I felt like everyone was always judging me, waiting to give me a guilt trip, and every time someone told me even in the nicest way not to do something I felt like I had done
something as terrible as killing someone. May the schools be punished for this, may there be justice.

Clara commented on 05-Apr-2012 12:47 PM

Thanks for your recent comments Ryan. I'm sorry that it took me a while to "release" your comment. You know, we get a lot of spam comments so I now I have to release comments personally one by one -- and now that I'm not on this site very often sometimes
it takes a while! Thanks so much for sharing your story. It really angers me that everybody is always quick to punish the kids, and especially the boys, first. I'm not saying that kids are not sometimes wrong, but we have to first look for what makes kids
do the "wong" thing. And frankly, sometimes I don't think what the kids do is even that wrong. As an adult I would also physically push away someone who touches me when I don't want it. I don't see why kids should not have the same right. But... it sounds
that you have grown up to be a smart and competent person. All power to you and good luck with everything.